Boohooo ...

It looks like a rebuild of ‘t Kreng’s front suspension is very near! During a reconnaissance run for next Saturdays Night rally I hit a bump in the road a little bit too hard. The impact ruined the RH front damper insert, but also managed to move the RH strut backwards a fair bit. Due to the TR7’s front suspension set up the LH side was pulled forward by the anti roll bar so much that the LH tyre scraped the lower inside of the wheel arch on less than full lock!

Last weekend I spent a whole day under the car to get everything more or less in shape. I am happy that there‘s no visible damage to any of the suspension components or the body shell. The last one is probably thanks to the strut brace! So I only need a new set of front dampers to get the car back on the road. At least that’s what I thought until I got home this evening with the new tyres fitted to the wheels. Despite them being Yokohama’s with the same dimensions as the previous ones (205/50R15) they don’t fit with my current spring settings. With the old tyres the clearance between lower spring platform and inside tyre wall was minimal, but enough;

Sadly the Yoko A048’s have a slightly wider tyre wall with the wider bit slightly lower than the A032R’s. As a result the inside just touches the lower spring seat. Easily rectified by winding them up a bit, but then the front of the car will be too high. Other option is to put slightly shorter springs in. But that together with the shot damper(s) is reason enough for me to look into something different and use this set up under the DHC. Luckily first contact with a local suspension manufacturer was made a few weeks ago, with plans to visit them within the next few week. Call it foresight!

Probably to be continued somewhere in the (near) future. But it does also mean there will be no car with start number “0” on the 20th edition of the “Nachtrit”!